Discussion
The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be
As I was scouring the neighborhood around 9pm last night after work looking for an open pet store, I flipped through the local radio stations looking for something new and interesting. I really didn’t expect to find much, but after awhile, I finally hit something with an interesting beat and lyrics. Something that I hadn’t heard before and sounded different. I kinda liked it, but couldn’t place it.
It turns out that the station was previewing the new Green Day album, 21st Century Breakdown, (due out in stores and online today). I consider myself somewhat of a Green Day fan, despite the fact I only own Dookie and American Idiot. (And there’s a good, somewhat funny concert story related to the band mixed in there as well.) As such, I’ve been cautiously optimistic about their new album.
From what I heard in between futile stops at closed pet stores, I decided to buy it today. But as I made that decision, I realized that, while maybe I’m just uninformed, there are very few albums coming out that I’m genuinely looking forward to with anticipation and excitement. And I was truly surprised about how ambivalent I really felt about this release by a band that I know I like. Maybe that’s because as we get older, we become more picky and more frugal. Or perhaps we just haven’t heard anything awesome in such a long time, we figure it might be best to wait and see if we hear a buzz before we cautiously download a song, much less an entire album.
Hometown <em>Blues</em>?
One of country music’s gifts is its ability to evoke strong images and feelings through its relatable lyrics. And nothing engenders intense, occasionally conflicting, emotions like your hometown. Whether or not your hometown is a reflection of who you are or have become, it is an integral part of your personal history and has influenced you in ways perhaps too obscure to realize.
I love hometown songs because of the obvious emotion behind the lyrics. That emotion is always imbued with a sense of nostalgia or longing (for what was or what could be or what might have been), even if the lyrics don’t necessarily shine a positive light on the hometown. It’s an irresistible combination, especially for country music listeners.
Satirical Songs
I’ve known about Kinky Friedman for some years now. Actually, I should be more specific and say that I’ve known Kinky Friedman’s name for quite some years now. Because, to be honest, the only thing I really knew about him until very recently is that Willie Nelson supported him for Texas Governor in 2006, which should have peaked my interest enough to research him back then.
It wasn’t until recently, after doing an Amazon search for stray Todd Snider songs, that I realized that the colorful and fascinating Friedman, while politically extreme at times, was quite the singing satirist. On the 2006 album Why The Hell Not…The Songs of Kinky Friedman, I discovered an incredible cast of artists (Willie Nelson, Todd Snider, Bruce Robison, Asleep at the Wheel, Delbert McClinton, Charlie Robison, Dwight Yoakam, Kevin Fowler & Jason Boland) doing covers of Friedman’s songs, many so sharp that I was more than a little taken aback at first. Through satire and, sometimes, even seriousness, Freidman offers a lot of social commentary that is often colorful and always intriguing.
Before It’s Too Late
In May of 2004, Bill and I were excited about the prospect of seeing Willie Nelson in our small town, in Maine, of about 13,000 people. We knew it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see such an icon without even having to travel ten minutes to reach the venue. Furthermore, he was on both of our lists of people to see before we died.
Sadly, we did not get to see Willie after all. On the same week he was supposed to visit our small town, he had to get carpal tunnel surgery. We had the option of either getting a refund or using our tickets for the rescheduled show in September. Once again, our luck was bad, because we were moving to Michigan the month before Willie’s make up date.
If you can’t tell, I still haven’t completely recovered from that disappointment.
Favorite Songwriter
don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I happen to be a huge Steve Earle fan. I find the Virginia-born, Texas-inspired, former drug addict, political activist, actor/radio personality, singer-songwriter, and country-rock star simply irresistible. He is gifted with an instinctive ear for music (which he has generously passed on to his son, Justin Townes Earle), a curious mind, a keen awareness of the world and an empathetic heart.
Given these qualities, one of Earle’s most indelible contributions to country music will be as a songwriter. His empathy, awareness of the world around him and curiosity have allowed him to musically explore the human soul. He is uniquely unafraid to step out of himself and into another’s shoes, to feel another’s joy and pain and to tell his or her story. In many ways, Earle is “the seeker” he sings of in his song of the same title:
